Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.

Appreciation | Art | Faith | Heart | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Mind | People | Religion | Appreciation | Art |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

I sometimes wish they would swagger more now, buy bigger overcoats and wilder hats, and retain those traces of make-up that put them outside respectability and keep them rogues and vagabonds, which is what, at heart - bless 'em - they are.

Sense |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Any corner of that county (however fair or squalid) is in an indefinable way 'home' to me, as no other part of the world is. There was a willow hanging over the mill-pool and I learned to climb it. It belonged to a butcher on the Stratford Road, I think. One day they cut it down. They didn't do anything with it: the log just lay there. I never forgot that.

Existence | Hope | Important | Man | Woman |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

And then alas! I let the matter reset, watching and waiting only, as we have too often done.

Debt |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

And yet, Eomer, I say to you that she loves you more truly than me, for you she loves and knows; but in me she loves only a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the fields of Rohan.

Rights | Slavery | Work | World |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Clothes are of but little loss, if you escape from drowning.

Computer | Energy | Right | Technology |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Death never comes at the right time, despite what mortals believe. Death always comes like a thief.

Nations | Object | Race | Spirit | Time |

Italian Proverbs

With patience you go beyond knowledge.

God | Harm | Ignorance | Power | Time | Truth | Will | Witness | God |

Italian Proverbs

You surround your vineyard with thorns - place doors and locks on your mouth. You will never have a friend if you must have one without faults.

Change | Human nature | Life | Life | Nature | Reality | Religion | Truth | Will |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off).

Focus | Knowledge | Mind | Reason | Research | Unique | Work | Following |

Ivan Krastev

[It's] difficult to engage people in politics when they believe that what really matters is where they personally stand.

Ideas | Practice | Sacred | Sense | Sound |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

Experience | God | Human nature | Life | Life | Nature | Sense | God |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

If there is one thing left that I would like to do, it's to write something really beautiful. And I could do it, you know. I could still do it.

Beginning | Evidence | Life | Life | Meaning | Sense | Worry |

Italian Proverbs

With art and knavery we live through half the year; with knavery and art we live through the other.

Generosity | Selfishness | Time | Unkindness |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Deserves it I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Anti-semitism | Cause | Object | Race |

Italian Proverbs

With the fox one must play the fox.

Absolute | Men | Sacred | Study | Will |

Italian Proverbs

You are more likely to win if you take the initiative and make an attack rather than preparing to defend yourself.

Faith | God | Light | People | Property | Religion | Will | God |

J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

I think, however, that so long as our present economic and national systems continue, scientific research has little to fear.

Loneliness | Lying |

Italian Proverbs

Wise men learn by other men's mistakes, fools by their own.

Absolute | Atheism | Better | Cause | Critic | Discussion | Evil | Extreme | God | People | Problems | Religion | Science | Theology | Will | Work | World | God |